Earth Liberation Front
[8] ELF "monkeywrenching" is carried out against facilities and companies involved in logging, genetic engineering, GMO crops, deforestation, sport utility vehicle (SUV) sales, urban sprawl, rural cluster and developments with larger homes, energy production and distribution, and a wide variety of other activities, all charged by the ELF with exploiting the Earth, its environment and inhabitants.
[9][10] The Earth Liberation Front has no formal leadership, hierarchy, membership or official spokesperson and is entirely decentralized; instead consisting of individuals or cells who choose the term as a banner to use.
[9][10] Techniques involve destruction of property, by either using tools to disable or the use of arson to destroy what activists believe is being used to injure animals, people or the environment.
The ELF claimed that burning down the house was non-violent because it was searched for any living creatures; an issue which is much debated within the environmental movement.
In a communique to the press from the group's "above-ground spokesperson", Craig Rosebraugh, that was later published in The Environmental Magazine, the group said in November 2000:[12] Urban sprawl has undoubtedly served to alter nearly 90 percent of Long Island's habitats, either by physically removing them, paving them, or polluting them with toxic man-made materials, making them either undesirable or unsustainable for most species.The North American Earth Liberation Front Press Office (NAELFPO or ELFPO) was relaunched in October 2008, receiving anonymous communiques from activists, for distributing to the press and public, to discuss the motives, ideologies and history behind such actions.
[13] Craig Rosebraugh served as an unofficial spokesperson for the ELF Press Office in North America from 1997 to early September 2001.
[14] Doubts have been raised about whether Rosebraugh or other unofficial spokespeople have ties to the cells involved,[15] although the press office claim they do not know the identities of ELF members.
It was understood that the simplicity of the guidelines was a crucial factor to engage as many people as possible to the new cause, with the intention that the ELF would quickly become as popular as the ALF.
Green Anarchist magazine publicized the communique with the demands from the ELF:[21] All our peat bogs must be preserved in their entirety, for the sake of the plants, the animals and our national heritage.
Fisons must leave all of it alone – now!The ELF quickly spread across to Europe by 1994, with actions first occurring in the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Spain, France and Finland, and the name starting to be used across the globe.
[23] British Elves were also making contact with like-minded activists, informing them about the ELF and its tactics, with missionaries targeting specifically France, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands.
The same restaurant then had its locks glued and spraypainted again, but this time in support of the British McLibel Two, two activists who had distributed anti-McDonald's leaflets.
[27][28] The only other reported action of the year was on Christmas Day, when a fur farm was raided in Michigan and 150 mink released into the wild by the Great Lakes ELF.
[30] In late November 2008, a group calling itself Eco-Anarquista Por El Ataque Directo (Eco-anarchist cell supporting direct attack) claimed responsibility for several recent actions, including half a dozen Molotov cocktails thrown at tren férreo (metro rail) in Mexico City, incendiary sabotage against Telmex,[31] and a Molotov cocktail thrown at a Banamex ATM.
The Elves wrote to the local paper "Let this be a lesson to all greedy multinational corporations who don't respect their ecosystems,"[38] with most actions taking place in Oregon.
[40] The ELF then set fire to Michigan State University on New Year's Eve, using a gasoline bomb to cause $1.1 million in damages, because of a program to provide GMO plants to African farmers.
[42][43] On November 27, in Colorado, the ELF burned the Legend Ridge mansion and sent a message to the Boulder Weekly saying "Viva la revolution!"
[44] In March, a total of thirty SUVs were torched, belonging to Joe Romania's dealership, in Oregon, with damages estimated at $1 million.
On May 21, a fire destroyed laboratories, offices, and archives at the Center for Urban Horticulture, University of Washington, causing a total of $7 million in damages.
The ELF claimed responsibility based upon the incorrect belief that the university was involved in genetic engineering of poplar trees.
[51] The damages totaled $20 million[51] after flames reached an estimated 200 feet (61 m) in the air, as over a hundred firefighters attempted to put out the fire.
[54] On the morning of March 3, explosive devices set fire to four multimillion-dollar homes from the 2007 Seattle Street of Dreams in Echo Lake, Washington, causing $7 million in damage.
[55] Authorities described the act as "domestic terrorism" after finding "ELF" spray-painted in red letters, mocking claims that the homes were environmentally friendly: "Built Green?
[61] In late 2005 and early 2006, as part of Operation Backfire, US grand juries indicted a total of 18 activists on a range of charges related to "violent acts in the name of animal rights and environmental causes".
[62] According to the FBI, many of these acts were carried out on behalf of the ELF[38] and was considered as one of the largest arrests of environmental activists in American history.
[2][5] Both names are also used by radical activists when engaging in direct action to liberate animals and defend the earth by using property destruction.
This was only a few months after the fur farm had been raided by the Great Lakes ELF, which also highlighted the overlap in direct action for animal rights and environmentalism.
[69][70] However, this claim contradicts the Southern Poverty Law Center, which states that the first incident of cooperation between the two movements was 6 months before these events on October 27, 1996, when the ALF & ELF were both responsible for firebombing a Forest Service truck in Detroit, Oregon.
[45] As the ELF was becoming well established through its actions, on 21 June 1998, the United States Forest Service wildlife research center near Olympia, Washington was set on fire with "Eco-Defense" and "Earth Liberation" spray-painted on construction machinery, which had received extensive damage in New Jersey on the 2nd Feb.
demolished this feed facility due to its role in the systematic torture and killing of thousands of innocent creatures yearly – animals which possess the same complex emotional/physiological traits as loved household pets, yet are denied all reasonable consideration and confined to a miserable "existence" in tiny wire cages hardly large enough to turn around in.Marshall Curry created a 2011 documentary about the ELF, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.
